The High-Flying Life of Evel Knievel: American Showman, Daredevil, and Legend

by Leigh Montville

Doubleday

His name now blurs into the haze of posterity. But in the late 1960s and early 1970s — until grim fate dealt a bitter corrective at a place called Snake River Canyon — the coolest man on earth was Evel Knievel.

Evel will live forever, but in a purely literal sense he died — miraculously, in his bed — at 69 in 2007. Leigh Montville brings him vividly back in an outlandishly entertaining new biography.

A combination Elvis, Hugh Hefner and Steve McQueen, Knievel was a motorcycle bravo who hurtled at 90 mph over rows of cars, frequently crashed to the music of his own bones fracturing, and spent much of his peak earning period being “stitched up like a baseball,” as one observer put it. Posters shouted, “Appearing both nights if he survives Friday’s appearance.”

For his derring-do he earned the sighs of ladies and the worship of children. You know, he broke every bone in his body, boys told one another. Such toys as the Evel Knievel crank-up action motorcycle, which whizzed thrillingly up ramps, preferably ending with a crash into a little sister’s dollhouse, grossed $100 million.

Men loaned Evel their wives for the night. Muhammad Ali gave him the highest conceivable praise when he said, “You’re the white Muhammad Ali.” At a fancy restaurant one night, Richard Burton came up to pay his respects and Salvador Dali asked to meet him. On “Happy Days,” Fonzie shamelessly ripped off Knievel by doing motorcycle and waterskiing stunts so out of character that it gave us the phrase “jumping the shark.”

Who was Evel? The man born Robert Knievel was an existential outlaw from Butte, Montana. Among his many tricks, scams and cons was a carnival act in which he urged a friend to drive his motorcycle through flaming slices of particleboard. To top that, he promised a crowd of 300 in Washington State that he would jump over a couple of mountain lions and a box writhing with rattlesnakes. His back wheel landed on the box, and the snakes duly sped into the crowd. Disaster, or tour de force? The line would be as thin as a membrane for years to come.

During one of his many stays in jail (Knievel was an accomplished burglar, targeting mainly those who refused to subscribe to his “security service”), proximity to fellow desperado William Knofel supposedly inspired a wit with a badge to remark, “We’ve got Awful Knofel and now we’ve got Evil Knievel.”

He altered the spelling and headed for Hollywood. Despite his snarling personality, his womanizing, brawling and thieving, Bob saw himself as an apple-pie American hero — a self-described “conservative wildman.” He wore an immaculate star-spangled white jumpsuit he designed as a rebuke to the black-clad, long-haired counterculture antiheroes who called themselves Hells Angels. He carried a cane filled with Wild Turkey. He wore a cape.

Leading the counter-counterculture, he was the spirit of the fairground — but with a brooding awareness of death. After John Milius — who would go on to write “Apocalypse Now” and “Red Dawn” — wrote a movie about him, Knievel’s natural gift for gab blended neatly with the Milius credo of iron-forged manliness. Feeling disrespected among more conventional athletes at a sports luncheon, Knievel once declared, “I would like you to tell me if you can find a tougher opponent than mine. Because my opponent is death.”

Idle talk from a fool or a lunatic? Not really. Knievel went deeper into his drive on “The Dick Cavett Show”: “To me, life is a bore. I saw a guy working in that tunnel I came through here today. Why would a guy want to stand around in a tunnel for? He should get a motorcycle. Jump through the air. Breathe a little.” In the same interview, he said, “I’m a lot more aware of life and what it involves.”

The legend fizzled after Knievel’s cursed attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon in 1974. Knievel’s constant talk of his expected death scared away parents with small kids and dampened turnout. In an untested homemade rocket, he plummeted into the canyon when a parachute opened prematurely. That same day, Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, stealing his thunder.

Yesterday’s thrill continued to work dwindling crowds. He earned a jail sentence for beating up a writer who had written accurately of his hell-raising. “I stand by what I did,” Knievel said upon his arrest, then pleaded guilty.

His outlawry proved too genuine. Sponsors fled. Knievel had wiped out for good. But in living like a flame, he earned the right to identify with a passage from Jack London that he frequently quoted: “I would rather be ashes than dust . . . The proper function is to live, not exist.”